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Twenty-four hours later, Delane found himself on a road leading up from the town where he was lodging to the summit of the wide stretch of common land on the western side of which lay Great End Farm. Half way up a long hill, he came upon a young man in uniform, disconsolately kneeling beside a bicycle which he seemed to be vainly trying to mend.
But certain things stood out the figure of a young artist, sensitive, pure-minded, sincere, with certain fatal weaknesses of judgment and will, which had made him a rolling stone, and the despair of his best friends, but, as compared with Roger Delane after six months of marriage Hyperion to a satyr; then the attraction of such a man for his neighbour, a young wife, brought up in a refined home, the child of a saint and dreamer, outraged since her marriage in every fibre by the conduct and ways of her husband, and smarting under the sense of her own folly; their friendship, so blameless till its last moment, with nothing to hide, and little to regret, a woman's only refuge indeed from hours of degradation and misery; and finally the triumph of something which was not passion, at least on Rachel's side, but of mere opportunity, strengthened, made irresistible, by the woman's pain and despair: so the tale, the common tale, ran.
She made up the fire. She felt herself shivering with excitement, and she stooped over the fire, warming her hands. She had purposely left the front door unlocked. A hand tried the handle, turned it a slow step entered. She went to the sitting-room door and threw it open "Come in here." Roger Delane came in and shut the door behind him. They confronted each other.
The character of the men who take up the profession of journalism suffers from the lack of distinction and influence of their task. Raymond, Greeley, Dana, Laffan, Godkin, in America, and Delane, Hutton, Lawson, and their successors, Garvin, Strachey, Robinson, in England, are impossible products of the German journalistic soil at present.
A ghastly white had replaced the patchy red on his cheeks, and had any careful observer chanced to notice him at the moment, he or she would have been struck by the expression of his face as of some evil, startled beast aware of its enemy, and making ready to spring. But the expression passed. With a long breath, Roger Delane pulled himself together.
In a few minutes, indeed, the click of an opening gate could be clearly heard through the mist, and afterwards, steps. They grew fainter and fainter. All clear! Choosing a circuitous route, Delane crept down the hill, and reached a spot on the down-side rather higher than the farm enclosure, from which the windows of the farm-house could be seen.
On the actual publication he received many encouraging letters, a few of which are here given, together with a remarkable expression of opinion from Lord Russell, one of the few public men then living who could speak of the regency and the reign of George IV. from personal knowledge. From Mr. Delane October 22nd. Dear Reeve, I am glad you are pleased with the first notice of Greville's Journals.
I think it would be 'love's labour lost; for everybody who cares for such trifles and photographs taken on the spot understands German nowadays in England, and will prefer the original. Still, if you thought it worth your while to send a short notice to the 'Times, it would be a favour. My old friend Delane is no more, else I should have asked him.
If Delane forced himself on George with any vile tale, Ellesborough would probably give him in charge for molesting his former wife. There was absolutely nothing to fear, if she handled the thing in a bold, common-sense way, and told a consistent and clever lie. And yet, she had weakly made appointments with both her tormentors! made it plain to them that she was afraid!
Delane followed a stream of people entering the Abbey through the north transept. He was carried on by them, till a verger showed him into a seat near the choir, and he mechanically obeyed, and dropped on his knees. When he rose from them, the choir was filing in, and the vergers with their pokers were escorting the officiating Canon to his seat.
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